Semiconductor executives continue to jump ship, what signal is revealed behind it?

Image source @ Visual China

Wen丨 Semiconductor industry vertical and horizontal

Recently, semiconductor giant executives have jumped ship one after another. In a short period of time, Intel has poached Jeff Wilcox, director of Apple's Mac series architecture, Rohit Verma, AMD's chief independent GPU architect, and David Zinsner, chief financial officer of Micron.

In addition, Mike Filippo, a senior engineer who has worked at Apple for nearly three years, has joined Microsoft as a chief architect, responsible for the development of Azure server chips.

The semiconductor field has begun another round of executive job hopping.

What did executives do before they jumped ship?

Let's first look at Jeff Wilcox, Apple's director of architecture who was poached. This time Intel poached from Apple is the chief designer of its M1 chip product, he has joined Apple since 2013 and has 9 years of experience at Apple so far.

In the nine years of Jeff Wilcox, he was responsible for the development of Apple's T2 security chip and M1 series processors, under his leadership, Apple computer chips have achieved successive generations of improvements and innovations, in short, Jeff Wilcox is apple chips, and even can be said to be the technical pillar behind the scenes of Apple computers.

But we look closely at Jeff Wilcox's resume, Jeff Wilcox first worked at Intel, worked as a PC chipset leader architect for three years, and then was poached by Apple. Therefore, many people evaluate Jeff Wilcox's job hopping as a kind of "regression".

In fact, Rohit Verma, amD's chief independent GPU architect who was also poached by Intel, also worked at Intel, and this time it is also a "second house". From 1999 to 2013, he was a Chief SoC Architect at Intel for 14 years.

Since joining AMD in 2013, he has worked on projects during his eight-year career spanning discrete graphics for desktops and laptops as well as broader SoC architecture designs involving CPUs, GPUs, fabrics, power management, and security.

Interestingly, Verma's career overlap with the current Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is quite high. In 1979, at the age of 18, Gelsinger joined Intel as a quality control technician. When Verma began his career at Intel in 1999, Gelsinger served as General Manager of Intel's Desktop Products Division and became Intel's first CTO in 2001.

It can be seen that in the recent departure of executives, the executives who have been collected by Intel are inextricably linked to Intel.

When Pat Gelsinger returns to Intel as the new CEO in 2021, Intel has begun a period of attack, frequently poaching big bulls from other companies, especially the "old team" with whom he has worked.

On Linkedin, Rohit Verma also tweeted that she was excited about her return to Intel.

In addition to "returning" to the home, the opportunities released by the company's future planning changes have also become an important reason for attracting executives.

Microsoft is accelerating the layout of cloud servers and Surface devices to develop custom chips, and has released job information for SoC architecture director in its recruitment position.

Mike Filippo, who has been with Apple for nearly three years, joined Microsoft as Chief Architect and was responsible for the development of Azure server chips.

We flipped through Mike Filippo's resume. Prior to joining Apple, he served as Chief CPU Architect, Chief System Architect and ARM Fellow at ARM, where he was responsible for developing the Cortex-A76, Cortex-A72, Cortex-A57, and upcoming 7nm+ and 5nm chips, and he also worked at AMD and Intel for 8 and 5 years, respectively.

The ability to avoid brain drain

In fact, in addition to company executives, the semiconductor field has set off a wave of poaching because of the layout of the metacosm.

Microsoft's AR team has also lost more than 100 employees in the past year, of which about 70 originally belonged to the HoloLens team, of which 40 people jumped to Meta, including Charlie Han, former HoloLens user feedback director, and Josh Miller, former HoloLens demo team member.

Apple is also a key area for poaching, losing M1 processor R&D executives, self-driving car team executives, and even more than 100 former Apple employees poached by Meta in 2021.

To cope with this and avoid being robbed of more talent by competing companies like Meta, Apple offered a stock benefit to some engineers and staff in the software department. The amount of this additional income ranges from US$50,000 to US$180,000 (about RMB320,000 to RMB1.14 million), which will be issued in the form of restricted shares for a period of 4 years. Apple hopes to reduce job hopping among senior employees.

At Google, how to retain employees has been the subject of discussion at CEO Sandal Pichai's weekly executive meetings. At the same time, Google has also begun to provide employees with additional stock rewards to avoid being poached.

But sometimes banknote power isn't a panacea, at least not for executives. Dr. Venkata Renduchintala, a former head of intel hardware and chief engineer, made him one of Intel's highest-paid executives within The Company with a total annual compensation of about $26.88 million before announcing his departure.

In Intel's official announcement, since the TSCG group led by Renduchintala will be split into 5 groups, and the group leader reports directly to the CEO, these changes have led to Renduchintala's departure.

Earlier, Google vice president Suroggit left to go to Coinbase, the largest virtual currency trading company, to become the company's chief product officer. Coinbase is currently listed, and Suroggit's stake in the company is worth more than $600 million (about 3.8 billion yuan).

Leaving may be the starting point for pioneering

For the semiconductor industry, multiple job hopping by executives is not a bad thing.

After leaving Fairchild, Noyce founded Intel with Gordon Moore and process development expert Andy Grove; Jerry Sanders, director of Fairchild's sales department, founded AMD Semiconductor with several employees; Kleiner founded KPCB Ventures; Valentine founded National Semiconductor Company, and later Sequoia Capital.

In the wave of semiconductors around 1970, it can be said that most semiconductor companies originated from Fairchild Semiconductor. This group of semiconductor companies can be said to have laid the foundation of Silicon Valley's science and technology.

In the face of the departure of the "eight traitors", Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs made an image analogy: "Fairchild Semiconductor is like a mature dandelion, as soon as you blow it, the seeds of this entrepreneurial spirit will flutter around." ”

Jim Keller, the father of AMD Zen architecture, has also served as an executive at AMD, Intel and Tesla, and has repeatedly jumped ship to seek new challenges.

Poaching giant executives, can China learn?

Iron-clad executives, flowing water big factories. People are the core of the entire industry, China's semiconductor industry is driven by policies and capital, and now is a good situation. The treatment of semiconductor talents has generally been significantly improved, which has more advantages for attracting talents.

In the tide of executive job hopping, there is a noteworthy news. Former NVIDIA executive Yang Chaoyuan officially joined the domestic GPU manufacturer Biling Technology, serving as vice president and special assistant to the chairman.

Yang Chaoyuan worked at NVIDIA and TSMC, and during his tenure at NVIDIA, he was responsible for architecture design, R&D, tape-out and team management, established NVIDIA's first overseas R&D center outside the US headquarters in Shanghai, and served as the general manager of NVIDIA Shanghai.

The addition of giant executives to domestic manufacturers is undoubtedly an excellent wind direction, which means that the attractiveness of China's domestic semiconductor manufacturers is increasing. Today's Chinese semiconductors are transitioning from take-ism to true self-innovation, a process that requires the persistence of R&D investment and the importance of talent training.

Under the firm goal of aiming at the development of semiconductors, we expect more and more giant executives to join domestic manufacturers.